PUBLICATIONS
Female Entrepreneurship, Financial Frictions and Capital Misallocation in the US
(with Andrea Sy) @ Journal of Monetary Economics
Winner of the Young Economist Award from the European Economic Association and UniCredit Foundation in 2021
Heterogeneous Markups Cyclicality and Monetary Policy
(with Andrea Chiavari and Danila Smirnov) @ International Economic Review
Female Entrepreneurship, Financial Frictions and Capital Misallocation in the US
(with Andrea Sy) @ Journal of Monetary Economics
Winner of the Young Economist Award from the European Economic Association and UniCredit Foundation in 2021
Heterogeneous Markups Cyclicality and Monetary Policy
(with Andrea Chiavari and Danila Smirnov) @ International Economic Review
WORKING PAPERS
Student Debt and Entrepreneurship in the US R&R at AER
Special Mention at the 9th Edition of Econ JM Best Paper Award from the European Economic Association and UniCredit Foundation
Labor and Family Dynamics in a Joint-Search Framework (with Danila Smirnov). R&R at JPE Macro - 2nd round
Sorting into Entrepreneurial Teams (with Edoardo Acabbi, Andrea Alati and Luca Mazzone). Submitted.
Is Knowledge Enough? Financial Literacy, Marriage, and Gender Differences in Wealth (with Marta Cota, Maria Frech and Michael Tallent). Submitted.
Student Debt and Entrepreneurship in the US R&R at AER
Special Mention at the 9th Edition of Econ JM Best Paper Award from the European Economic Association and UniCredit Foundation
Labor and Family Dynamics in a Joint-Search Framework (with Danila Smirnov). R&R at JPE Macro - 2nd round
Sorting into Entrepreneurial Teams (with Edoardo Acabbi, Andrea Alati and Luca Mazzone). Submitted.
Is Knowledge Enough? Financial Literacy, Marriage, and Gender Differences in Wealth (with Marta Cota, Maria Frech and Michael Tallent). Submitted.
WORK IN PROGRESS
No Country for Young Managers: Relational Capital and the Distribution of Italian Firms (with Luca Citino, Stefano Pietrosanti and Guido Spanò)
We study how credit is allocated over the managerial life-cycle and its aggregate consequences. Using matched Italian administrative records on firm balance sheets, top managers, and credit outcomes, we document significant age- and tenure-based credit gradients: younger and less-tenured entrepreneurs obtain less credit and face higher denial risk, despite higher average revenue product of capital. We develop a general-equilibrium heterogeneous agent model with occupational choices in which firms' borrowing capacity evolves with managerial age and within-firm tenure. The model matches the empirical life-cycle patterns in credit and capital productivity, and implies sizeable misallocation through constrained entry and expansion of high-productivity young entrepreneurs. Counterfactuals reveal that broad collateral easing and targeted flattening of age-based collateral generate output and welfare gains, whereas flattening tenure-based collateral yields smaller gains and higher inequality. Policy exercises show that fiscal subsidies and user-cost relief on capital to young entrepreneurs at entry can deliver aggregate gains, while public-guaranteed collateral is welfare-improving when eligibility extends to their first few entrepreneurial years, despite a materially higher fiscal cost.
Suited for the Job: Knowledge Mismatch in Higher Education (with Alejandro Rabano and Ante Sterc)
Digital technologies and the transition to a low-carbon economy are reallocating labor demand across types of knowledge. In this context, we analyze the supply of university fields of study and their effects on welfare and wage inequality. We provide micro-level evidence from Spain on university graduates. We show that field choices reflect both tastes and expected wages, and that labor market returns depend on the match between graduates' field of study and the knowledge required in their occupations. Also, universities do not systematically adjust their seats to labor market trends. We develop a general equilibrium model where students choose fields, universities supply slots across studies and firms demand field-specific knowledge. After calibrating the model to Spain, we explore the aggregate effects of increasing labor demand for digital and green jobs. While wages rise heterogeneously across fields of study, we find that both shocks increase wage inequality.
Choosing Demand (with Lukas Nord and Federico Pessina)
We document that the conditional distribution of profit rates is flat along the size distribution of firms in Portuguese administrative data. While many small and profitable firms remain persistently small and profitable years after entry, their profitability is positively associated with indicators of specialization in the product market. We suggest that the presence of small but profitable firms can be rationalized by demand-side heterogeneity, with firms choosing whether to produce in a mass or niche market. We formalize this mechanism in a firm dynamics model with search in the product market and firm-specific dispersion in consumer preferences.
